City Commission OKs new t-hangers at airport

The El Dorado City Commission gave its approval to build 10 new t-hangers at the airport during their meeting Monday.

Julie Clements

The El Dorado City Commission gave its approval to build 10 new t-hangers at the airport during their meeting Monday.

The last time the commission had seen this item, they asked for information on prospective tenants for the new hangers.

They now have a list of eight “better than prospective” tenants, as well as two more possible tenants after phone calls last week.

“Most people don’t understand that cities, especially in airports, have to compete with other cities,” said Commissioner David Chapin. “Now Augusta is possibly going to go into partnership with Andover to build their airport bigger yet. Not that this is a race to see who is going to get the biggest airport, but it is a vital part of the city. It’s very good to have a nice facility and by bringing on the facility and growing the facility we benefit. The city as a whole benefits.”

Brad Meyer, public works director, said it will cause more people to fly in, which means more people will buy fuel.

“Several of our largest employers are not headquartered in El Dorado,” added Herb Llewellyn, city manager, “but that doesn’t mean they don’t need to come to El Dorado to do work. We have those jets that come into our airport.”

Commissioner Shane Krause asked if they anticipated the rent for the t-hangers paying off the debt they will incur.

Meyer said along with the property taxes already allocated to the airport it would.

Historically a half a mill goes to the airport, but Llewellyn said if fuel sales escalated they wouldn’t continue the half mill if it wasn’t needed.

The airport currently houses about 40 airplanes, while three to four years ago that number was about 28.

“We’ve grown quite a bit in the last couple of years,” said Caleb Marsh, airport manager.

The commission approved the building of the t-hangers 4-0. Mayor Tom McKibban was absent. It will take 90-120 days to complete the project.

• heard from resident Teresa Fioretto who visited the commission last month with concerns about her neighbor parking his work trucks on the street in their residential neighborhood. She said she is still having the problem.

• set a hearing date of 7 p.m. April 1 for the spreading of the cost of Project No. 289 the paving of School Road from Central to Sixth. The preliminary estimate had been $1,036,077, with the final cost being $859,754.26 and the improvement district paying $522,314.04 and the remainder paid by the city at large.

• set a hearing date of 7 p.m. April 1 for the spreading of the costs for Project No. 356 the paving of Third Avenue from Boyer to Village. The preliminary estimate was $1,025,348, with the final cost being $821,812.99 and the improvement district paying $482,353 and the city at large paying the remainder.

• discussed the light at Village and Central, which was not working correctly. Llewellyn said they had to reset the cameras a couple of times lately. He also pointed out if a car is in front of the white bar on the street the camera will not recognize it.

• was told the repair crew for the wind turbine got in town on Friday and was setting up the rigging. They were waiting for a day of calm winds to do the work.

• heard an update on Sixth and Main. Scott Rickard, assistant city engineer, said they had a disappointing shutdown on Friday when the Kansas Department of Transportation shut down their contractor on a technicality of weighing each truck after milling. The city had an agreement that was based on the amount of asphalt milled, but KDOT pays by the ton and wanted it all weighed. The contractor was working on finding scales from another job site to bring in.

• was told the city of Augusta asked to have another year of no reset on their water contract. Their contract is supposed to reset if they use more than a specific amount of water, resetting to the new higher level.

Because El Dorado is now Augusta’s sole source of water, Llewellyn said it would have reset the last two years, but they agreed not to do that. It would reset this year if the city doesn’t allow a no reset again.

Chapin said he would like to have some actual numbers on the water.

“This is still about being a good neighbor and not gouging our neighbors in a tough time,” Krause said.

“That works both ways,” Chapin said. “We don’t want to get gouged either. That is why I want to see the numbers.”

More information will be brought back to the commission.

• gave their approval of a suggestion from the Housing Task Force that on new subdivisions any specials for infrastructure be put in temporary notes and those savings be passed on to the developer until they go to bond.

• heard that the city is practicing single stream recycling, something that went live internally Monday. When the city began recycling single stream options were not available, but today some of the bigger waste groups throughout the United States are already doing it.

“We haven’t been, up until now, real comfortable with how it was done and markets to take materials,” Meyer said. “Today, several of the major brokers that broker material throughout the U.S. have gone in and dived head long into the single stream recycling and it has worked well for them.”

The change will not affect customers at this point. The only changes were in the processing facility.

Meyer said at some time he sees them going to a semi-automated process, then later fully automated as they do the trash service now.